Court auditor finally drops director’s job

The Belgian member of the European Court of Auditors Karel Pinxten is to step down as a director of the international chemicals company Tessenderlo Group at the end of June.

Pinxten, a former Belgian minister, joined the court of auditors on 1 March. But apparently it has taken him this long to work out that, when the European Treaty says that “the members of the Court of Auditors may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not”, this means he cannot be a company director. It also took a letter from the Parliament’s budgetary control committee, Szabolcs Fazakas. Pinxten used to be an MEP himself, in 1989-91, so he should have known better.

There is something splendidly parochial about the state-aid investigation launched last week by the European Commission’s competition department into JC Decaux, a French advertising company. The question …